Crashed and burned? 2012′s Year of the Water Dragon’s attending happiness and success? Where did it go? I was really hoping to turn things around. 2011 sucked. It’s my bad fortune to report that my hard drive crashed. Yep, that’s the state of the union and all I’ve been dealing with for nearly two weeks; fallout. Here’s what happened. My 90 pound Staffy SamIAm walked into my laptop, knocking it off the ottoman in my office. Turns out I didn’t have any proper backups, only thought I did! So now, though financially strapped, have to figure out a way to pay for data retrieval, if it’s retrievable.

*sigh* It seems everybody has to go through this at least once. I’ve been entering data, computing, since ’89, owned a personal computer since ’90 and on the Internet since ’93, web authoring, as it was referred to. This has never happened to me. I’ve been lucky. It feels like I’ve lost a limb. All my files, photos, drivers, tabs, documents, bookmarks, email addresses, correspondence, poetry, songs, videopoems, art, gone! It’s devastating. What else is there to say about it? Oh yeah,  learn from my mistake and make sure your hard drive is backed up! Anything can happen, including big assed dogs.

I wish someone could tell me. Let’s talk paternity fraud, a term that didn’t exist when I was born. One of my New Year’s resolutions is to find my biological father. Or try to. “Does he even know I exist?” I asked dear old Ma after she’d blurted out on her death bed that my father, the only father I’d ever known, was not my “real” father. Shocked naturally, I didn’t believe her at first, but it explained so much! Why people often asked if I was adopted. Why I felt no kinship to my father’s side of the family, the Daneliuks, or the “Danefucks”, as our schoolyard tormenters called us. Why I took my mother’s maiden name. It explained the bouts of estrangement between my sisters and I, my half-sisters. We’d always been so different, what little common ground we shared divided in two. Why Grandma Daneliuk favored my sisters. She must have harboured suspicions. Why I always felt like a freak!

I asked my *alleged father*. Equally shocked, he could provide no information, but sympathetic, took a DNA test at my request. The results excluded him, “as the biological father of Heather Haley.” First thing out of his mouth; “I’d never have married her if I’d known.” Thanks Dad. Poor Dad. By lying on my birth certificate, my mother had betrayed both of us. All of us, biological father deprived of any relationship with his daughter. I was stunned by my sister’s reaction, intense sibling rivalry. “Ha! That means I’m the oldest.” Neither could she understand my dismay, why I should care. She should know me better. I must always know the truth. Besides, I have a child and our health to consider. Ironic too, that fascinated by crime, intrigue and mystery, I wind up saddled with huge one, seemingly impossible to crack. I’m running out of time with everyone, including me, getting older. I’ve questioned my mother’s surviving relatives, all claiming to know nothing, though I wasn’t spared gossip. Apparently, Ma liked to have fun, often driving down from her home in Matapédia, Quebec to the CFB base in Chatham, New Brunswick to attend parties. Maybe bio-dad was stationed there, serving in the Air Force. I’d consult with a private investigator if I could afford to. Though I could go mad speculating, the writer in me can’t help imagining. I’ve developed a theory; she couldn’t tell me, didn’t know his name. Maybe it was a one-night stand. Maybe she was raped. She did describe such a scene to me once. Catholic, rural, Great Darkness-Duplessis Orphans era Quebec was not a good place to be knocked up. Ashamed, desperate to be married, her child legitimate, she lied. This is the real kicker; wed or not, knowing people would do the math, my grandmother tried to coerce her into an abortion.  Sins are more sinful when the whole town knows.

I’ve been advised by someone who does understand how much this means to me that generalized ancestor DNA testing can provide valuable insights, give me an idea of bio-dad’s racial, genetic back ground. Family Tree testing provides email addresses of people who share your DNA and wish to be connected. My only other hope is to visit the relevant villages back east and start asking a lot of hard and persistent questions, if I can find people willing to talk. Of course any such information can be extremely unreliable and vexatious. I will try to arrange a trip out there in the not-too-distant future. Hey, I could make a documentary. We shall see. I still hope there is some way to solve the mystery.

I envy adoptees and sperm donor babies; they have legal recourse. Clues. In 2010, a woman named Olivia Pratten mounted a lawsuit against the provincial government, the first of its kind in Canada. It sought to amend the B.C. Adoption Act requiring physicians keep permanent records of all egg, sperm or embryo donors and allow offspring to access those records when they turn 19. Not having the right relegates Pratten to “second-class citizen status and represents the province’s wholesale abandonment of equality rights,” according to her lawyer, Joseph Arvay, a veteran constitutional attorney. Indeed. It’s a fundamental right to know our origins. Arvay cited a passage from Roots, stating “that in all of us, there is a hunger—marrow deep—to know our heritage, to know who are and where we came from. Without it, one is left with a disquieting loneliness.” Try and explain that to my sister and long-dead mother, whom I still miss. I think she had every intention of taking the secret to her grave, but dementia prevented that. Ah, family secrets, all too common and often entwined with abuse and domestic violence.

Though it’s not in my nature, perhaps I should just give up. Let it go. I’m torn. Still wondering. Thanks Ma.

And neither can the poet in me help but imagine:

PRINCESS NUT

If I could have been inside
the hollow tree that night
I would have seen his face.
I would know his face. His body,

spiced with sweat salt and tobacco.
My father. Forbidden topic.
Fugitive. Alien, though earthly
as a cyclone to my mother, clinging

from an oak as he pried her limbs apart.
I would have heard howling, watched
his head rearing back. Full lips, gappy grin
revealed. Full lips, gappy grin like mine.

I would have seen the twigs
and russet leaves stuck to their thighs.
I could have picked up
the knife. Saved my mother.

I would know, what is his,
what is mine. I would know
he’s the smooth nut in a rough cup,
I, one of many acorns.

I’ve often wondered what it would be like. I wasn’t raised by wolves—wolves aren’t innately cruel—but suffice to say, my parents were ill educated and culturally challenged. Normal, far as I knew. Far from a priority, art was not even a concept in our home. A queen of blarney, my mother weaved elaborate tales and collected “ornaments.” Skilled with his hands, my jack-of-all-trades father hawked carvings while stationed in the Yukon with the RAF, identifying himself as a woodworker or carpenter. I think we all harbour an inner artist. Still, I was decidedly the family freak. Determined to honour my writing, to finally take it seriously, find discipline and seek inspiration, I’ve been reading biographies and watching documentaries, most recently C. Scott Willis’ The Woodmans, about a shining young photographer named Francesca Woodman, who committed suicide in 1981 by jumping off a building. Interestingly, that’s right around the time I was living in New York, starting out as a musician. An artist. It was brutal. I got out, made my way back to the west coast. And in an aside, interesting, isn’t it, the similarity in our poses above, the choice of iconography, me with my acorns, Francesca with her birch bark.

Anyway, it seems Francesca was Continue Reading »

Woody Guthrie’s NEW YEARS RULIN’S, for 1942:

1. WORK MORE AND BETTER
2. WORK BY A SCHEDULE
3. WASH TEETH IF ANY
4. SHAVE
5. TAKE BATH
6. EAT GOOD – FRUIT – VEGETABLES – MILK
7. DRINK VERY SCANT IF ANY
8. WRITE A SONG A DAY
9. WEAR CLEAN CLOTHES – LOOK GOOD
10. SHINE SHOES
11. CHANGE SOCKS
12. CHANGE BED CLOTHES OFTEN
13. READ LOTS GOOD BOOKS
14. LISTEN TO RADIO A LOT
15. LEARN PEOPLE BETTER
16. KEEP RANCHO CLEAN
17. DON’T GET LONESOME
18. STAY GLAD
19. KEEP HOPING MACHINE RUNNING
20. DREAM GOOD
21. BANK ALL EXTRA MONEY
22. SAVE DOUGH
23. HAVE COMPANY BUT DON’T WASTE TIME
24. SEND MARY AND KIDS MONEY
25. PLAY AND SING GOOD
26. DANCE BETTER
27. HELP WIN WAR – BEAT FASCISM
28. LOVE MAMA
29. LOVE PAPA
30. LOVE PETE
31. LOVE EVERYBODY
32. MAKE UP YOUR MIND
33. WAKE UP AND FIGHT

Should old acquaintance be forgot? No, but 2011 should. Happy New Year. I’m so relieved the holidays are over. Can I have my life back now?

Unlike amitious troubadour Woody Guthrie, I have one resolution. Kick ass. Write! Honour it. That ability. I have so much writing to do.

I don’t have to remind myself to bathe, brush my teeth, wear clean clothes, look good, change socks and bed clothes often, but they are sound resolutions. I do need to work more efficiently. In fact, I must overcome paralysis. Isolation. Wake up and fight! Inertia. Embrace my process, engage in process. Process!

I will quit crap; viewing, reading and eating. Read lots good books. Play guitar dammit. Cultivate some discipline. I may be at my fighting weight but still need to get tough. Get fit. Get off Facebook. Work on my website. Have company but don’t waste time. Ditch those that drag me down. Love everybody. Oh, and since it’s nearly one minute to midnight in terms of finding my biological father, I must make efforts to solve that mystery. Learn people better. Especially thyself. Also, no more sadness, anger, grief. I will forgive, freeing myself in the process, and thus unburdened, unhindered, go so much farther. Onward and upward. The only way to go. Keep hoping machine running. In all ways, kick ass.

T H E   T O W N    S L U T ’ S    D A U G H T E R

©2011

g i r l s   w i t h   g u i t a r s

CHAPTER ONE

They shoved their way in through a huddle of punk rockers. Fiona thought they looked like soldiers, uniforms of black leather weighted with chains, safety pins, buttons and badges. The girls strolled the length of a long hallway, tall murals pulsating with ghastly, contorted faces, Fiona startled by her reflection, eyes gleaming in a glut of mirrors. She looked like a wimp all right, a honey blonde, bell-bottomed puffball floating close to the spikes and big, black boots, so close to the stench of dyed hair, Fiona thought she might puke. Backing up, she grabbed Shannon’s arm.

“I don’t belong here.”

“Okay, so where do you belong?”

“I don’t know!”

Shannon sighed.

“Oh, all right, let’s go.”

A rising wave of guitar distortion crested, blasted through double doors, shock of spazzing centipede legs creeping up the base of Fiona’s skull. Music? Loud! Fast. So fucking LOUD her spine stiffened. A voice wailed.

“Is that English?”

Shannon laughed. “That’s DOA.”

The girls groped along the back wall, legs wobbling, sonics thundering. Shannon pointed to the towering hulk in a plaid lumberjack vest as they headed toward the stage.

“Joey Shithead.”

With two fingers under his nose à la Hitler’s moustache, Mr. Shithead threw his right arm into a Sieg Heil salute.

“Fascism suuucccks!”

The names cracked her up. Chuck Biscuits manned the drums. Randy Rampage fiddled the head of a Fender bass slung low past his knees.

Shithead scowled. “Fuck tuning!”

“PLAY!” roared the audience.

DOA played. DOA ranted, railed in mega-decibels. Various and assorted jerks fought for the microphone stand, slamming it into Shithead’s face, whacking his lips repeatedly. Shithead growled, blood and sweat slinging off his big bear head, pitching in time to some inner tic. Sneering, stick-fisted Chuck pummeled the tom-toms. Rampage moved like elastic, sproinging back and forth across the stage, or throwing himself onto his knees and crawling, raised guitar a saber.

Boisterous, head-shorn boys feverishly jumped up and down in one place, arms held stiffly at their sides. Fiona noticed a tall, flaxen-haired Adonis latched onto a humungous speaker like a lecherous hound humping a human leg, his head shoved inside the woofer.

“Who is that?”

“That is Dennis Jeklin.”

Dennis Jeklin jumped off and swarmed the room; pit bull in a china shop, snarling, charging, crashing into tables, climbing up onto the stage to cavort before flinging himself off. Upraised arms snatched his body, tossing it about until Dennis reached the back of the room without hitting the floor. Fans hurled bottles, beer, saliva.

“Eeeuuuuhh…! What’s with the spitting?”

“Gobbing’s hard to explain,” said Shannon. “Later, okay?”

“Okay. How about much later?”

Three songs. Already. Hard, furious, Shannon and Fiona stealing glances between dodging bodies, ramming torsos. Crowds creeped her out and this crowd was verging on a mob. A core of four goons thumped harder and longer than the rest. Bowery Boys apparently, Dennis decidedly a member.

Fiona had to pee. Shannon pointed to the back. She opened the bathroom door to cackles and squeals, two girls perched on a wet counter, smoking and passing round a mickey bottle of Canadian Club. The littlest one in a striped t-shirt and denim jacket was tom-boyishly cute, an orange curl in the middle of her forehead.

“Wanna snort?” She shoved the bottle under Fiona’s nose.

“No thanks.”

Overflowing toilets crammed with feces and vomit, paper towels and tampons forced Fiona to tamp down her gag reflex. She found the last stall shut, two pairs of blue suede, thick-soled-shoe clad feet visible. Fiona leaned against the tiles to wait, everyone staring.

“I don’t look right, do I?”

Giggles. “Hey, you’re cool,” purred the girl with the curl, handing Fiona the whiskey. “Kinda look like a hippie though.”

Praying they wouldn’t slag her, Fiona took it. Turning around to peer in the mirror, the rye steadied her, as the light became a little less jarring. She realized the girl with the long, black bangs was talking to her.

“Sorry,” yelled Fiona. “What did you say?”

“What do you think of the band?”

“Ah well . . . they’re, interesting.”

They laughed. Bangs Girl came to Fiona’s aid. “Well, at least she didn’t say, ‘They’re loud.’”

Curl Girl sidled up. “I’m Oona. This is Jade. She’s in a great band! The Dishrags. What’s your name?”

Just as Fiona opened her mouth to speak, the music died to the sound of loud shrieks and whistles. Jade opened the door a crack, a frown marring her pretty, Geisha-pale face.

“Fuck! It’s the pigs.”

Groans, screams. “Let’s get outta here!” Oona drained the bottle and flung it into the garbage can. “It’s a raid!”

They tripped over each other scrambling to get out. Now what? Fiona decided to hide her underage ass. She remembered the four legs in the third stall, went over and pounded on the door, banging and screaming out in the club becoming louder, closer. She climbed the neighboring toilet, leaned over the top to zero in on two girls. One leaning against the wall, eyes shut, was statuesque with a haystack of dirty-blonde hair. The other, a petite Asian girl, occupied the throne, hunched over a needle resting on her upturned arm like a mosquito. A jolt traveled the entire length of Fiona’s body, her knees buckled.

“Hey! It’s a raid!” Leaning Girl lifted her head with a huge effort, gazing at Fiona’s as if it were floating. She returned to her nod. “Okay. Get busted. Why should I care?”

Fiona opened the bathroom door a smidge, squinting at the bright, overhead lights, rear fire doors framing a paddy wagon idling in the alley, back yawning open like a mouth. Where is Shannon? At least Fiona could keep her cool, a vital skill when one is born to a hysterical mother. Jeanette would run around like a headless chicken, her youngest hollering instructions: “Mom, call an ambulance. Mom, dial 9-1-1! Mom, stop the bleeding.”

Barking orders, the Vancouver Police herded people into queues with their nightsticks, shoving them against the walls, demanding ID. Any kid who got mouthy was handcuffed and hauled off. An awful lot of kids were handcuffed and hauled off. The door of the stall creaked open, girls falling out to stand and blink.

“Let’s go.” Heroin Girl couldn’t, or wouldn’t, make eye contact.

“Aren’t we better off here?” asked Fiona.

“Nah,” she replied, the voice of experience.

The two covered their eyes—see-no-evil monkey style—and heaved their high selves out the door. Fiona peeked through her fingers, watching in amazement as they breezed through the melee. Guardian angels? Patron saint of junkies? Would that be St. John, protector of the sick? Fuck that! What am I gonna do? Fiona paced. Jesus Christ! Junkie Girl might be stoned, but she’s right. No place to hide. Oh please God, don’t let my head get bashed in. Fiona exited, flitting across the floor strewn with broken bottles, melting ice, upended tables and chairs, spying a pair of tortoise shell glasses, lenses streaked with blood. Should I get in line or try to slip by? Fiona resolutely headed toward the front door, staying close to the wall. Wish I could blend in with those hideous murals. She watched a girl dragged by fluorescent pink hair to the paddy wagon to be hurled inside, poor thing landing on top of a boy, unconscious. Fiona ducked under a counter. There’s Oona! Cop grilling her. Oona snotty, naturally, refusing to show ID; probably doesn’t have any. She can’t be more than fourteen. Jade tried to hush her. Oona talked back once too often. The cop cuffed and dragged her out to a patrol car. Slamming Oona’s head against the hood, he kicked her legs apart, roughly frisked her tiny body and handily tossed it into the paddy wagon, Oona pitching off the walls until finally face planting on the floor.

“Psssstt!” Startled, Fiona turned around to see Continue Reading »

Enchanted morning swim, matrix of turquoise
lagoon. Silver palometas, yellow damselfish
caress my legs. Casa Ocio walls whitewashed
in cactus milk. Coconuts on the lawn.
Palm fronds bowing, rippling like sea anemones.
Heavy mahogany Hemingway digs.
Gecko chirps from behind a gilt frame.
Cool terrazzo marble pulls sand from toes.
Double rain showerhead. Full throttle bottle bar
under a palapa. I ponder the power
of local masonry to withstand hurricanes,
why it seems odd to name them after men.

Beneath an arbor of pink bougainvillea
sit my dubious nephew, delicate girlfriend,
doubts sinking slowly into the deep
purple cushions. We are going to town. To Playa.
Soft brown doves adorn neon.
Turtles bask on green tile mosaic. Red house
hosts a party tableau of orange Fanta, blue corn
flowers, flags of paper lace, chocolate pan de huevos.
We smell agave, chili, vanilla, coriander and anise,
hear mariachis blaze a mighty La Bamba. Gobble
pumpkin tamales, snow-white beach cooling our heels.
Mongrels expire at the feet of professional urchins
soliciting pesos. I will not cry, pick a white handkerchief
festooned with poinsettias embroidered by his mother.
No, I can’t buy them all. Though downcast he will not cry.
Our Lady of Guadalupe provides. Protects.

Christmastime but it’s Mary I see. Everywhere. To the faithful
the forever virgin manifests in reefs, rays and schools
of gobies and fairy basslet. In the crystalline water
of a cenote near Merida. In the mynah’s cry.
They live in Mother Mary’s shadow, warm as her embrace.
Queen of the Americas imperial as the iguana
gnawing hibiscus, sunning atop Tulum’s serpentine stairways.
She is wing carved into rock, three pelicans soaring above.
Even Mary, standing on the moon, presiding over the jungle
in a cloak of stars, could not stop the calendar,
marauding anthropologists or games to the death.

On every altar she towers over the crucifix, candles,
iron crosses, golden grapes. She is under their skin,
her miraculous portrait inked onto their muscles.
Hammered in copper, in tin. On murals.
Santa Maria assures and comforts all
her Mexican children. Heals. Entirely and ever
Virgin Mary is the horizon, sea and sky colliding
in azure, cobalt blues. Sacred to all. Taxi drivers.
Marimba players. Deejays and charros. She waves
from the cruise ships, watches over fire dancing,
blesses the portrait of two young lovers lost
in a car crash. Her people feel the harbour of her arms
around them. Her mercy. Infinite. Close.
First comes Mary. Holy Mary. Mother of God.

I’m more comfortable being pro-something, anything, but my conversion to antitheism was inevitable. For I am discerning, intelligent. Not that I was ever all that devout. I am a recovering Catholic, as they say, or Cathological, as my friend Tom Snyders puts it, though lucky enough to have escaped parochial school, unlike my mother. However, the sight of a nun still elicits an immediate and visceral reaction; my body stiffens, I cast my eyes to the ground. Thank god, such sightings are rare. There, you see, it’s practically in my DNA, though I have stopped capitalizing god. I also resort to “Christ” a lot and I’m as deeply infused with guilt and shame as my parents, taught that I was born tainted with original sin, for I didn’t escape Sunday school. Even as a child, a part of me knew it was all a crock, distrustful and dismissive of a fearsome and vengeful deity. Due to innate stubbornness, I never succumbed completely to indoctrination, attending church mainly to sing in the choir. I fled a home bereft of imagination, becoming the consummate bad girl, gleefully and with panache. Some would say I’m still at it, but I grow weary of good girl/bad girl talk and figure, who are you to judge?

I wasn’t rabidly anti-Christmas but if, or how to observe wasn’t an issue before I had a kid. My riot grrll self would do as many Jews do, go to a movie followed by Chinese food. But when I had my son, depriving him of the experience didn’t feel right. I had fond memories of a time of year when my folks were actually nice. They were drunk of course. I grappled with the hypocrisy of Advent calendars and tree trimming, even tried attending midnight Mass. Such rituals can be awfully moving, Catholic iconography beautiful, appealing to my sense of aesthetics. It didn’t work. We both squirmed. I did teach Junior who Christ was, his historical significance, and counseled, that as sound as Christ’s teachings are, he was a regular dude, not a god. The only Christmas perk I can see, one I am glad to partake of, is time off work, which affords friends and family a chance to get together.

I’m no pagan either but isn’t it interesting that Continue Reading »

“Why are you looking at that tree?”

“To really see it.”

from the Kino Pictures film, POETRY, directed by Chang-dong Lee

So I wound up at the Railway Club on the wrong night, confused my Tuesdays, the last one with the upcoming. Flu fog, that’s my excuse. My buddy poet Pete (Trower) and I wound up having a lovely time chatting with Jenna and Stuart. A curious thing happens when I’m with Peter. Not the charming aforementioned, but *some* people appoint me his caretaker.  Though I’ve become his defacto agent and honoured to be his friend, Pete is not disabled, I point out, just old. 81 to be exact, and doing all right. Must have something to do with all that lumberjacking. Or carousing. Pete gripes sometimes, not without good reason, but I remind him it’s a privilege to grow old and that fortunately he is not afflicted with diabetes, Alzheimers or heart disease like many of his peers. If ever I’m fortunate enough to reach my golden years, I don’t want people patronizing me. Far as I can tell, there’s a fine line between respect and condescension.

In any case, Pete thoroughly enjoyed being feted and fawned over, interviewed really, about the history of the Railway, his old stomping grounds, and the city, his description a far cry from the travel brochures. I used to hang out at the Railway during our punk rock heyday but Pete had better stories. The place used to be teeming with drug dealers, pimps and hookers, who took clients across the street to what is now the St. Regis Hotel. That particular sort of vice has been driven further underground or afield but certainly, there is no dearth of action and it’s still a great live music venue.

I’m making progress on the upcoming Irving Layton Centenary, working in tandem with Rob Taylor and Diane Tucker in Vancouver to promote both our events. I will host a shindig here on the island on Saturday, March 10, and they will present a celebration the next day as part of the Dead Poets Reading Series. I hope to web cast and will definitely videotape/document the readings. Here’s Max Layton’s blurb:

“Canadians coast to coast are celebrating the 100th anniversary of the birth of one of our greatest poets, Irving Layton, who was born on March 12, 1912. Perhaps never before in history has an entire country united to remember—of all things!—one of its poets. Celebrations are scheduled in every province and this page serves as our communication HUB for such Events. If you would like to organize an Event in your own community please contact Max Layton at maxlayton@rogers.com.”

Oh, and I forgot to announce that Charles Butler of Winnipeg, Manitoba won the draw for my blog contest a few weeks back. Congratulations Charles! My books and CDs are on their way, just in time for Christmas. Woo hoo! HO HO HO

. . . and a pot of chicken soup. I start battling the flu the moment the clocks turn back. Every godamn winter; I wish I could make like a snowbird and fly south, to an abode in the desert. I’ll put it on the list.

My buddy Sean Cranbury of Books on the Radio invited me to contribute to his delightful Advent Book Blog. Despite the aforementioned bug and a dearth of time for fiction, here is my recommendation.

I’ve long been a fan of Dennis E. Bolen’s uncanny dialogue and unadulterated prose, the economy of which adapts well to the short story genre and his new collection, Anticipated Results. Though Bolen skillfully renders male Boomer ennui entertaining, not every tale wags in Loser Ville. As affecting as his unflinching portrayals of disaffected, middle-aged lost boys may be, I was moved by other premises: the emotional intensity of a child fleeing a bizarre outburst of patriarchal rage, the twisted, lustful hilarity of Kitty, the genuine poignancy of Lena, an account of driving with offspring as fraught with a father’s palpable longing, regret and resignation as his daughter’s intractable anxiety, seething and clumsily concealed reproach. The result? A thoroughly engaging read. Check out the book trailer, which we just screened at Visible Verse Festival.

Another friend, Max Layton, son of Irving Layton, has asked me to participate in a nation wide Layton centenary celebration in March. I said I’d be happy to and have started planning an event here on the island. It will provide an opportunity to celebrate my birthday as well. If it’s half as wild as 2011’s, we’re in store for a memorable occasion.

And oh, other books I’d happily recommend; and also sharks by Jessica Westhead, Jenn Farrell’s The Devil You Know, Michael Crummy’s The Wreckage and The Spoken Word Workbook, edited by Sheri-D Wilson, with “inspiration from poets who teach, 27 of the most influential Poets, Griots & Bards working in jazz, hip hop, dub, slam, storytelling and sound from across North America,” moi included.

I just read an article in the Huffington Post by Yashar Ali called A Message to Women From a Man: You Are Not “Crazy” which posits, “It’s a whole lot easier to emotionally manipulate someone who has been conditioned by our society to accept it. We continue to burden women because they don’t refuse our burdens easily. It’s the ultimate cowardice.”

I call the practice crazy making and portray it in my novel but this guy calls it gaslighting, after the film Gaslight. Remember how Ingrid Bergman’s husband tries to drive her nuts by deliberately setting the gaslights to flicker, convincing her she’s just seeing things. Ali makes an apt analogy. “You’re so sensitive. You’re so emotional. You’re defensive. You’re overreacting. Calm down. Relax. Stop freaking out! You’re crazy! I was just joking, don’t you have a sense of humor? You’re so dramatic. Just get over it already! Sound familiar? If you’re a woman, it probably does. Do you ever hear any of these comments from your spouse, partner, boss, friends, colleagues, or relatives after you have expressed frustration, sadness, or anger about something they have done or said? When someone says these things to you, it’s not an example of inconsiderate behavior. When your spouse shows up half an hour late to dinner without calling — that’s inconsiderate behavior. A remark intended to shut you down like, “Calm down, you’re overreacting,” after you just addressed someone else’s bad behavior, is emotional manipulation, pure and simple. And this is the sort of emotional manipulation that feeds an epidemic in our country, an epidemic that defines women as crazy, irrational, overly sensitive, unhinged. This epidemic helps fuel the idea that women need only the slightest provocation to unleash their (crazy) emotions. It’s patently false and unfair.”

And sad but true! So true. I suspect some men engage in such tactics in order to feel superior, in control. My gal pal Mahara pointed out they do it because it works. Certainly, it has shut me down on far too many occasions. We aim to please, we women, though I have always spoken the truth, damn the consequences. Been true to myself, despite the constant pressure to be a nice girl. A good girl. Behave. Here’s hoping Mr. Ali’s column can help spread awareness of the problem. Women are tired of being on the defensive. Another friend complained the message has more impact coming from a man. It isn’t the least bit fashionable to be a feminist these days, but at least we’ve got one in our corner, a useful male engine.

The long goodbye . . . I am slowly saying goodbye to this place that I love, a little bit more each day. Times are tough all over and we may be forced to Continue Reading »